
This strip, perforated with holes whose position and length determine pitch and duration, is drawn over a pneumatic device that shoots streams of air a mechanical player piano player piano,Īn upright piano incorporating a mechanical system that automatically plays the encoded contents of a paper strip. In 1810 the double-action striking mechanism, which permits rapid repetition of a tone, was perfected. The English piano maker John Broadwood (1732–1812) was the first to develop the present heavier, more sonorous instrument. The square piano, with strings parallel to the keys, was the most popular domestic piano until the early-19th-century perfection, in Philadelphia, of the upright piano. It was greatly improved by the 19th-century innovation of an iron framework, best applied by the Steinways of New York City. The piano was originally built in the shape of a harpsichord, and this style, the grand piano, has always been the standard form. some composers, notably Bartók, emphasized the instrument's percussive qualities. Debussy and Ravel used the special effects peculiar to the piano in highly original ways. The main body of its enormous literature, from the 19th cent., includes the works of Beethoven, Czerny, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Franck, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Clementi were the first major composers to write for the piano. changes in musical taste gradually favored the piano's greater volume and expressiveness, and the instrument had largely supplanted the harpsichord and clavichord by 1800. Click the link for more information., but the latter was far more delicate in tone.ĭuring the 18th cent. It consists of a small rectangular wooden box, placed upon a table or on legs, containing a sounding board and a set of strings. , keyboard musical instrument invented in the Middle Ages. This expressive quality was shared by the clavichord clavichord

Click the link for more information. in that by varying the touch one could vary the volume and duration of tone. Venice was the center of its manufacture. The harpsichord originated in the 14th cent. Its strings, two or more to a note, are plucked by quills or jacks. Stringed musical instrument played from a keyboard. of Art., N.Y.C.) It differed from the harpsichord harpsichord, (One of the two existing Cristofori pianos is in the Metropolitan Mus. The first piano was made c.1709 by Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), a Florentine maker of harpsichords, who called his instrument gravicembalo col piano e forte. The dulcimer is related to the psaltery and modern zither. It is a wooden box with strings stretched over it that are struck with small mallets.


The piano's earliest predecessor was the dulcimer dulcimer Piano or pianoforte, musical instrument whose sound is produced by vibrating strings struck by felt hammers that are controlled from a keyboard.
